


I've Got You Under My Skin

by foxfireflamequeen



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 19:26:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7281667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxfireflamequeen/pseuds/foxfireflamequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Kent made each other whole before they knew how to be whole on their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Got You Under My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> for the tumblr [Check Please! Trope Challenge](https://omgcp-tropechallenge.tumblr.com/) trope #1: soulmate AUs.

 

Kent Parson is sixteen years old, and his best friend shares his heart.

Jack’s half of their heart is big and bright red and matches Kent’s beat for beat, and the first time they kiss they feel their heart stutter. Their chests glow so bright when they’re on the ice together they have to wear double the padding to cover it up.

They fumble each other’s clothes off in the dark and Jack’s heart gets so bright Kent’s eyes hurt to look at him. He turns Jack over and they have sex for the first time messy and uncoordinated, Kent’s hand over Jack’s heart to mute the glow. Jack starts laughing when Kent’s heart beats too fast against his back.

“Feels like it’s going to burst out of your chest,” he says. “Feels like it’s inside me.”

“This half’s mine,” Kent grouches, muffled against the back of Jack’s neck. “You can’t have the whole thing.”

It’s over embarrassingly fast, and Jack hasn’t come yet. Kent brings him off with his hands and mouth and Jack’s heart is bright enough for Kent to see the fondness in his eyes even in the dark. Kent lowers his eyes and presses a hand against his chest where Jack can’t see. His heart feels so full he thinks he’ll choke on it.

Later, Jack lays his head over the muted glow through Kent’s threadbare sleep shirt.

“It’s bigger than mine,” he says, and Kent laughs because they’re the same, that’s the whole point, but Jack always thinks Kent’s half is bigger, redder, beats louder.

“You’re just closer to it,” he says, and cringes. Kent is sixteen years old. He doesn’t like being sappy.

Jack doesn’t care, though. Jack likes sappy. Jack hums contentedly and falls asleep. His breath puffs warm against the skin of Kent’s neck.

Kent thinks he feels his half of their heart get bigger in his chest.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is seventeen years old, and his best friend has an anxiety disorder.

Jack’s heart races and Kent feels his heart try to speed up to match. Jack’s heart gets so dim when he’s having a panic attack Kent can barely see it anymore and it hurts, feeling the echo from Jack’s heart where it’s beating faster and faster to make up for Jack not breathing right.

Sometimes, when it gets too bad, Jack presses his hand into his chest, clawing through flesh and blood until they’re squeezing his heart, like he can physically hold it still. Kent feels phantom fingers closing around his own heart and wants to scream at him to stop, but it distracts Jack enough to get him breathing again, so Kent presses the back of his hand to his mouth and swallows the bile.

“You alright, kid? You take that check too hard?” Bob asks, concerned, when he catches Kent rubbing his hand over his chest for the fifth time in an hour. Kent didn’t even realize he was doing it. He gives Bob a resolute nod and doesn’t demand to know how he can notice Kent compulsively chasing an echo and not even realize that his son’s heart is hurting bad enough that Jack shouldn’t even be able to stand, let alone chase a puck around the ice.

It’s not Bob’s fault, but Kent hates him anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says, and Kent shoves him away and doesn’t tell him it’s not his fault because he’s said it too many times and Jack still keeps apologizing and it’s not _helping_.

Jack’s heart is dim enough now that they can finally face each other when they fuck. Kent hates it.

“Hey,” Jack blinks heavy blue eyes up at him. Kent can’t really see his expression in the dark. “Kenny,” he says. “It’s okay.”

He pulls away until Kent slips out, then turns over. Kent hates that even more, but he doesn’t know what to say. He presses harder against Jack’s back so Jack can feel his heart race.

The meds aren’t working, not the way they should be. Jack’s taking more than he should but at least it smothers the pain for a while. The red of his heart wanes more and more every day.

Kent’s heart dims in echo. Kent’s heart hurts too. Kent doesn’t have meds to help dull the pain.

Alcohol helps them both.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is seventeen years old, and his best friend’s heart isn’t beating.

There are pills on the floor and puke in the bathtub and Jack’s head is lolling on the tiles and Kent can’t see Jack’s heart at all, his heart that’s too bright to look at, that shines through layers and layers of thick jackets, his heart that _Kent can’t feel anymore_.

He calls 911 with shaking fingers. He tries to remember how people on TV do CPR. He presses down on Jack’s chest and pinches Jack’s nose to blow into his mouth.

Jack doesn’t breathe. His heart doesn’t beat.

Half of Kent’s heart is dying.

Kent makes a decision.

 

 

 

“What did you do?” his mom screams in the sterile white hallway of the sterile white hospital. “Take it back!”

“No,” Kent says.

Jack is alive. Jack is alive and breathing and he’s going to be okay, and Kent won’t be here when he wakes up because he has to fly out. Kent was picked first in the draft and it’s all he’s ever wanted but there’s a hole in his chest where his heart used to feel full when he was happy and he isn’t even sure he’s happy.

Jack is alive. Jack is going to rehab. Jack will probably need a lot of therapy. Jack should have gone first in the draft but he didn’t because Kent gave him that bottle of vodka and it was sheer dumb fucking luck that he found Jack before it was too late. Jack could have died because Kent didn’t tell anyone what was happening, just fucked him when he wanted to be fucked and gave him more and more booze to ease his own pain.

It’s not even that he feels guilty. He’s not sure what he feels, but he knows he doesn’t regret what he did.

Kent lets his mother rage and cry and feels bad for upsetting her, but he stands his ground. He’s not taking it back.

Jack isn’t small, but he looks pale and young on the hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines. Kent touches his hand and startles a little at how warm it is. His heart is very red under the pale hospital gown. It’s not terribly bright, nothing like what Jack’s heart used to be, but it’s big and full and it’ll do its job just fine.

“It’s not your fault,” Alicia tells him, wiping streaks of mascara from her cheeks. She strokes his hair and holds him close when he cries. “You did the best you could. You saved his life.”

“Don’t tell him,” Kent begs. “He doesn’t need to know.”

Alicia is quiet for a long time. Her heart is red in her chest, bright like her son’s used to be. “You should take it back.”

“No,” says Kent. “It’s his to keep.”

Kent Parson is seventeen years old, and his heart is in his best friend’s chest.

 

 

 

It’s strange, not having a heart. No one really looks at him askance because some people just don’t have very bright hearts, and the ones who remember how bright his heart used to be in the Q chalk it up to adulthood and the lack of one Jack Zimmermann. There are rumors about him giving it away, but no one can pin down to whom because they didn’t exactly tell the media they shared a heart and Kent is pretty definitively single. Besides, there are plenty of people who store their hearts in safer places than inside their rib cage. His team managers know, so that’s everyone who needs to.

They make him go to therapy. The shrink tells him he was an enabler. She suggests taking some space and removing himself from the people and situations of that night, and it helps to stop drinking and start calling his mom back and disable Google alerts for Jack Zimmermann.

He wasn’t sure he would be okay, not really, but he kinda loves his team, even though he doesn’t click with anyone the way he had with Jack. Hockey is the love of his life and he’s living his dream and his team is basically family, and it takes some time but he figures out how to be okay.

His chest stops feeling empty after a while. His heart has gotten used to being in Jack’s body; Kent can tell because he feels the echo of his heart hurting the way Jack’s heart used to, but only sometimes. Most of the time the echo is just—good.

He still rubs at his chest. That’s a habit he can’t break.

 

 

 

Jack calls. Kent doesn’t pick up.

Jack stops calling.

Kent calls. Jack doesn’t pick up.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is eighteen years old. He misses his best friend.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is twenty years old, and he has the Calder and a Stanley Cup, but he doesn’t exactly have a best friend.

His half of their heart doesn’t glow as bright in Jack’s chest, but it’s identical to Jack’s in every other way. It probably feels exactly the same. He wonders if Jack feels the echoes of Kent’s feelings anymore, or if it’s a one-way street now.

It’s like they’re in a fucking face-off, the way they stand in the middle of the Zimmermanns’ living room after Alicia opened the door, hugged him, deposited him in front of Jack and disappeared.

Jack’s going to college. _College_. Kent doesn’t get it. He can still play for the NHL, why is he going to _college?_

“You should have called first,” Jack says quietly, shoulders hunched in on themselves like Kent is Bad Bob Zimmermann watching him play. They used to be loose and low when it was just the two of them. His heart used to be too bright to look at.

“You called,” Kent replies, like he didn’t call back and get sent to voicemail over and over and over again. Payback, he supposes.

Jack’s lips tighten into a thin white line.

“Take it back,” he says.

“No,” says Kent.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know how your heart feels?” Jack rarely gets angry, but he’s frustrated now. Kent feels the faint echo of his heart speeding up. “How it feels when you’re happy or sad or when you’re sleeping? How it feels when you look at me?”

 _Does it feel that way when you look at me?_ Kent doesn’t ask, because he knows. Kent’s heart is trying valiantly to brighten up the room, because it’s Jack’s heart now.

“You saved my life, Kenny,” Jack says, and no one’s called him that in years. It’s Parse now, or Parson, or Kent. He left Kenny behind with his heart, but he doesn’t tell Jack that. Kenny sounds good in Jack’s mouth. “I can never thank you for that, or apologize enough for what I did. But it’s your _heart_.”

“It’s your heart,” Kent says. “I gave it to you,” he says, and, “Throw it away if you don’t want it, but you can’t make me take it back.”

He didn’t get to tell Jack what he wanted, convince him to play for a team instead of going to college, but he knows what Jack’s shoulders look like when they’re squaring up for a fight and there’s a fullness in his chest he’d forgotten to miss.

Kent walks out of the Zimmermann house and gets on the first plane back to Vegas because fuck this shit.

 

 

 

Jack keeps his heart.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is twenty-four years old, and his once-best friend is in love.

He feels the echo of a too-full heart he hasn’t felt in seven years, so he flies to Boston and rents a car.

He knows what Jack’s eyes look like when he loves someone, so he thinks it’s the guy with the moustache first but turns out Jack loves the whole stupid team. Then he sees Jack lean awkwardly towards a smaller, blonder version of Kent, feels the echo get stronger and stronger, and steps in.

Fuck, but the kid’s heart is _big_.

Bigger than his and Jack’s put together, maybe. Redder than theirs, too. Not half as bright as Jack’s used to be, but brighter than Kent’s. It’s a whole heart, but whole like he was born that way, like he never had to share.

His heart is whole and big enough that he can slice a chunk away and it’ll still probably be bigger than the half Kent gave away.

Kent’s a little jealous, so he goes to find Jack.

 

 

 

There’s an echo of pain in his chest that he hasn’t felt in over a year.

Kent Parson is twenty-four years old, and he may or may not have fucked up.

 

 

 

They don’t talk.

Kent plays and he wins and he meets a Bruins goalie who makes his chest feel almost full again.

Adam has a whole heart. His sister had the other half. She gave it to him because his half was too weak for him to play professional hockey even with two surgeries. She doesn’t regret it either.

 

 

 

Jack calls. Kent picks up.

“I’m happy for you,” Jack says, and Kent feels the echo of fullness. He can’t see Jack, but he knows his heart is trying very hard to get very bright. It makes him smile.

“I think I have a type,” he chirps. “Idiots whose hearts give out on them.”

“The idiots part is right,” Jack says mildly. “But I made my heart give out on me. What’s his name?”

“Adam,” Kent says, automatically checking Skype to see if he’s online even though he knows it’s too late. “He lives in Boston.”

“The Bruins?” Jack snorts, because of course he made that connection immediately. “Really?”

Kent rolls his eyes, “Like you’ve got room to talk, with mini-me over there.”

Jack laughs. “Eric’s nothing like you,” he says. It’s not a compliment; just a fact.

“Adam’s nothing like you,” Kent returns, and that’s important. Jack goes quiet, but Kent can almost hear him smile.

“I’m sorry, for leaving,” he says.

“I’m sorry for making you leave,” Jack replies. “I miss you too,” he says, and, “I think I’m ready to try again. If you still want.”

Kent closes his eyes. They shared a heart, once. Of course he still wants.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is twenty-six years old, and he has a fantastic boyfriend who flies across the country to bring him his mom’s special New England clam chowder, and he has a completely useless possibly-maybe-best-friend-again who refuses to fly across the border to bring him Tim Horton’s, and this possibly-maybe-best-friend has a boyfriend who’s the most passive-aggressive motherfucker Kent’s ever met.

Kent and Bitty are not friends.

Adam and Jack are. They bonded over Kent and Bitty’s hatred of each other. Kent and Bitty hate-bonded over their respective boyfriends’ lack of support for their hatred of each other.

Jack and Kent look at each other and Jack’s chest gets a little brighter and Kent can almost pretend his is full. They text when they can’t call and call when they can’t meet and Adam and Bitty don’t really get it, but they get that Jack and Kent made each other whole before they knew how to be whole on their own.

It’s a work in progress for all of them.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is twenty-eight years old, and his best friend wins his first Stanley Cup.

Kent knows it’s only his first, because Jack’s team has gotten very, very good. He’s about to call Jack to tell him this when he gets the text, so he leaves a voicemail for Adam and gets on the plane and flies to freaking Montreal because that’s what you do when your best friend asks you to meet him there and you have the money to do it. Jack did it for him just a couple weeks ago when Kent had a small breakdown over getting knocked out of playoffs.

“Where’s Bitty?” he asks, following Jack to their giant backyard. Even Jack’s stupid little poodle that’s practically glued to his calves isn’t around.

“He’s staying with my parents tonight,” says Jack.

Kent blinks at him. Jack won his first Stanley Cup. He and Bitty should be celebrating together tonight.

“Are you fighting?” he asks. Usually he’s the first to know if Jack and Bitty had a fight, because he always takes Jack’s side. Jack vents at him for a while, gets it out of his system, then calls his other best friend (the wrong best friend, obviously) for rational advice.

Jack’s heart is racing like it hasn’t since he asked Bitty to move in with him. It didn’t race this hard when he won a Stanley Cup. His chest is brighter than it’s been since his half of their heart faded away, more than eleven years ago.

“Are you about to proposition me?” Kent snipes, just to be a dick. It works, and Jack chokes on a laugh. But his heart.

Kent has to shield his eyes.

“Zimms,” he says slowly. His chest feels like it’s going to explode, so full that he can’t even tell if it’s an echo. He’s a little scared. “Jack. What’s going on?”

“You said it’s mine,” Jack says. “You said it’s mine because you gave it to me.”

So they’re having this conversation again.

“I’m not taking it back,” Kent snaps, annoyed. “You can’t make me.”

“You said,” Jack continues like Kent didn’t speak. “That our halves were exactly the same. That yours wasn’t bigger than mine, or redder, or louder.”

“What are you doing,” Kent says, because Jack’s fingers are pressing into his chest. He doesn’t feel phantom fingers this time because he doesn’t have a heart for them to close around, but he can see it, and he knows how it feels to do it to yourself, and then Jack _pulls_.

“It’s not my heart,” Jack tells him, standing there in his and Bitty’s house, holding his beating heart in his hands.

“I won’t,” says Kent. His chest feels empty. His chest hasn’t felt empty in so, so long.

“Shut up for a second, would you?” Jack says, twin spots of color high on his cheeks. “It’s not my fucking heart. It’s not yours, either, not anymore. It was yours when it learned to be too full and then it was mine so it figured out how to be too bright and now it’s too much for either of us because it’s _ours_.”

He digs his fingers into the center of the heart, tears into it and pulls it apart.

It hurts. Kent tries to remember to breathe. Jack steps close, presses one half into Kent’s hand.

“This is yours,” he says softly. “I’m giving it to you. Throw it away if you don’t want it, but you can’t make me take it back.”

“Fuck,” says Kent, and closes his fingers. It’s warm. It’s too bright. His chest feels too full.

“I lifted the Stanley Cup today,” Jack shifts his feet, awkward like he always is when he has something important to say. “My chest felt like it was going to burst, and I wanted. I wanted to share that with you. You used to tell me I couldn’t have the whole thing. Kenny, I don’t _want_ the whole thing. It’s _our_ heart.”

“This is an awful declaration of love, Zimms,” Kent says, because he is physically incapable of handling this moment without being an asshole. He’s going to explode.

Jack punches his shoulder. “You’re such a shithead,” he says. “I love you. Are you going to throw it away or not?”

Kent is no longer a teenager, but he still hates being sappy, and Jack is still the only one who can make him that way. He doesn’t tear up, but he does wonder when exactly Jack Zimmermann learned to say those three words so freely.

“I hate you,” he says, and feels their heart flutter in his palm. “I’m not throwing away a perfectly good half of half a heart. It was mine first.”

They press their heart into their chests. Kent feels his half settle where it’s been empty for so long he forgot there used to be something there. It beats against his hand like it never left, like he didn’t live without a heartbeat his entire adult life.

“It’s very bright,” he says. It’s the brightest heart Kent’s ever seen. He doesn’t remember so well anymore, but he thinks it might be brighter than Jack’s original half used to be.

“And full,” Jack says. “I think I’m actually going to burst.”

“Me too,” says Kent, and they grin at each other like idiots.

 

 

 

Kent Parson is twenty-eight years old, and his best friend shares his heart.

 

**Author's Note:**

> comments are love, and you can also [reblog on tumblr!](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/146368684678/for-the-omgcp-tropechallenge-soulmate-au-in/)


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